itch.io

Congrats on your first jam! For me as a very casual gamer, the difficulty was sort of crazy. It feels like maybe you figured out exactly how to get through it, but to me, it felt like I kept dying because I just didn't know where the next enemy was going to come from. I see a few other people saying that the attacks felt a little slow, and I'd agree with that. I felt like I was mostly running away, and then trying to attack only when absolutely necessary.

However, the fact that you progressively gave the player new ways to attack kept me pushing through to what felt like the final level. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the control to beat that, but kept trying a few times.

Great job!

Really amazing art, sound, and concept! It felt really unique, cohesive, and heartfelt.

I also got pretty confused at the Vitruvian man part. I couldn't get past the second part (waving only the right hand), despite trying a few times. Great job, though!

Wonderful, focused experience!! Great characters and concept. And congrats on building your first game and on your first game jam!

Thank you so much for the feedback. The AI art definitely elevated the game feel from what it was, but there does seem to be an upper limit to it 😅. And really glad to hear there were parts of the controls that felt rewarding. We definitely want to tighten them up, and it's good to know what parts we might want to preserve!

Thank you!! This is great feedback. We are hoping to update the player movement to make it tighter after the jam judging finishes. Really appreciate you playing our game!

Thank you for giving it another try! And thank you for the additional feedback! =)

Really sweet experience. The whole experience seemed very heartfelt. I felt a bit of myself reflected in some of the choices. Thank you for that!

I really like this prototype! It was really fun and rewarding to play. Definitely felt like I'd accomplished something when I discovered the robber. Feels like an interesting core mechanic to build around.

I really like this prototype! It was really fun and rewarding to play. Definitely felt like I'd accomplished something when I discovered the robber. Feels like an interesting core mechanic to build around.

Super cool vibe! The platforming was beyond my ability level, though. I'm afraid I only got to the third screen (after "avoid dangerous terrain"), when my brain couldn't keep track of holding down shift AND directing my character in the right direction. Definitely appreciated the quick respawns, and wish I'd been able to experience more of the game. Great job!

Great job! Unique feel, and the sound and art merged really well together. I also really liked the 10-minute call mechanic. It gave me enough time pressure to feel like I needed to try to move quickly, while also realizing that the real time pressure was introduced by getting more clues.

Also love that you added a leaderboard! Super nit: I wonder if you could have hidden the leader board until the end of a run. When I played, someone had beaten the game in 10 minutes, which immediately had me wanting to get within that range on my first played.

Thank you! Sorry to hear that the character's jumps were too low. There's a directional dash mechanic, that allows you to basically triple-jump, but it's difficult to discover, and the tutorial can be easy to skip over.

Thank you for the suggestions! Glad you liked the concept and saw the potential in the storyline. Originally, we planned to integrate the dialogue into the level (as you suggested), but we are still learning Godot, so we opted to keep it separate. We kept the dialogue more linear, because we weren't sure how much people would even read it. But the card-collecting mechanic did seem to work!

Agreed that an actual artist could have done a better job, but I assure you that the two of us couldn't have =). The AI assistance was tremendously helpful, although it required a decent amount of tweaking afterwards by yours truly. Someone with true art skills could have done a lot more

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback! It's our first game jam and our first platformer, so we're learning a lot.

Yes, many of the key art assets are Gen AI, or we utilized Gen AI to make them. We used LayerAI for the character portraits, level backgrounds, and other backgrounds. We used the PixelLab plugin for Aseprite to help us animate the player character. ChatGPT generated the initial version of the game logo. And Suno for the level music.

Thank you!!

Thank you!!

Really impressive. I don't particularly like this style of game, but I played through the whole way. You made simple-looking pixel art very, very creepy. And the sounds were very well done, too. Great job!

I love the look of this game! Can you please publish a web playable version?

Looks like you're using Godot. For me, the HTML5 exporter worked, and then I just needed to "Export Project" with "index.html," then zip up the folder it created, and uploaded it to itch.io.

Please try out our game! https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2024/rate/3110076

We'd love feedback.

Will add yours to my list =). I've been trying to do a few every evening after work.

Will do! Would appreciate ratings as well: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2024/rate/3110076

Will do!

Here's ours: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2024/rate/311007

We'd definitely appreciate feedback!

Great job!! The art style immediately made this game feel different, and all the elements came together really well. Loved the music, the puzzle progression, and the story-telling.

Lovely experience! Loved the characters and the art. Perfect challenge level to draw me in and leave me wanting more. Great job!

Thank you! This is great feedback. Thank you for taking the time to play our game!

Thank you! Really glad you enjoyed it and saw the potential. Means a lot!

Got a chance to try it out! The voiceover was very relaxing, and it felt like there was some interesting lore developing. Wasn't entirely sure where I was meant to go, though, or what I was meant to do. Some hints on the game page might help?

Nice! I'll give it another shot =)

Oops you're right! Just took about 2 minutes of waiting for it to load. I swear I waited that long yesterday, but maybe I was just impatient.

Will give it another shot later today!

Oh wow! It means so much to us that you finished the game! Thank you!!

I wish we'd had a bit more time to rework the tutorial. The Up+Dash control felt easy to pick up if you saw someone do it, but difficult to "discover." And definitely hear you on the controls. We had an even worse keyboard set-up until the last-minute, and didn't have time to improve from there.

Thanks again!!

Thank you!!

I'm curious, what was jarring about the adaptive music?

Definitely hear you on the movement feel. It's our first game jam, and our first platformer, so this feedback is super helpful. We have a lot to learn!

Great job! Platforming felt really punishing, but fair, with tons of movement options. And the levels felt really open, with lots of different ways to get around. Also enjoyed the humor and dialogue!

Cool concept! It was really interesting to move around the room, and sort of felt like I was in a room full of people.

Very challenging game! I only got to level 2. It felt a bit weird that you didn't know for sure whether you'd found a spy or not. On top of that, a lot of the interactions seemed to take a few seconds, which made it quite frustrating when I ran out of time, and realized I should have just guessed, rather than interviewing a bunch of people.

Fun game, and I was really excited when I found the speed cheat code! The fact that there were no checkpoints was really frustrating, though. I got to level 3 twice, but each time I kept getting more impatient, and ultimately gave up, because I didn't want to play level 1 and 2 again. Great job overall, though!

Sorry to report that I tried to play on the web version on both Chrome and Firefox, and got stuck on the loading screen. Any chance you can fix it?

Really liked the art! You managed to add a ton of mini-games into a single game.

Thanks!!

Lovely art and interesting story (although I failed pretty hard on exposing the secrets). Felt like a very dark concept.

Loved the intro screen. I wish there had been more variety when reading through messages, like a different illustration between each part.

Cool game!! I'm not great at FPS, so I struggled to get very far, but I tried several times, and got a bit farther each time.

I wish I better understood the "undo" mechanic. I wonder whether the number of enemies overwhelmed me too much to understand the puzzle aspect of what the "undo" power resulted in. Or perhaps there was a use for it in combat that I didn't understand either.

Love the concept and the execution, but it was too challenging for me... I wish the puzzles ramped up a little more slowly. If I'd gotten stuck on the "M" level instead of the "J" one, I might have stuck to it for longer to try and get through it.

The graphics and audio fit perfectly, though. And finally figuring out the different puzzles (or finding out that they were impossible) was rewarding and amusing. Wish I'd had the platforming skill to get all the way to the end.

Great job!

Super cute game! It was way harder than I thought it was going to be. Definitely took me 3 or 4 tries to win. I'm a long way from being able to speed run it. The level music fit super well, too (although the weird voices in the ending music were a bit too weird for me).

Super curious... what's the secret cheat code?